here came the filth again, just as they were saying their farewells.
‘Leg it!’ said Fabio.
All the boys scattered.
‘Oi! Stop right there, arsehole!’ shouted one of the police, coming up fast at Fabio’s rear.
Fabio had no intention of stopping. He took to his heels, hurling himself down an embankment straight into a huge patch of brambles. The copper – no doubt dreaming of promotion – followed.
Both men started swearing and wincing. Shit, those things hurt.
It was the death of a thousand cuts. Flesh tearing, blood dripping off him like raindrops, Fabio hauled himself out of the damned brambles, seeing the copper still in there, trapped, struggling, trying to break free. Fabio sped off as fast as he could. He found himself in what appeared to be a deserted storage depot, surrounded by lorries in for repair.
Exhausted, he ran to the nearest shed door, slid it open. He slipped inside and slumped down on the floor, sweating, bleeding, shaking with the force of the adrenaline pumping madly through his veins. Minutes passed. He got his breath back, and… then he heard it.
A police radio, crackling, coming closer.
Shit.
He had to get out of here. He had the cash stuffed down his underpants. He inched open the door. No one in sight, but they were there, he could hear the bastards.
Fabio slipped outside, looking around for a way out. Quickly he pulled himself up onto the low roof of the building and nearly messed himself when a policeman went straight by the door, talking into his radio. A couple of seconds earlier, and he’d have seen Fabio coming out.
But Fabio had been lucky. And he meant to stay that way. When he was sure the copper was out of sight, he jumped from the roof onto a wall, and then almost fell down onto the other side, which turned out to be a main road. A road he knew.
Thank you, God.
He grinned triumphantly then broke into an easy loping run, heading homeward. He was fit as well as handsome, he took care of himself. He was just a jogger now – so long as nobody looked too closely at the scrapes and the bloodstains, and the black top hid a lot of it anyway. All around him, bedlam was breaking out. Cop cars sped past, blue lights flashing, sirens wailing.
Fabio trotted on, knowing precisely where he was going. In fact, he was getting tired of this, getting away with things by the skin of his teeth, these little bank jobs. But he’d accumulated a good bit of stake money in the process. Soon he would start getting into something far more lucrative and less risky.
